Getting started with Forge SDLC

This tutorial orients you to Forge SDLC as an operating model: versioned policy next to code, AI-assisted delivery with human ownership of risk and irreversible decisions.

What you already have

  • Methodology and process — See blueprints.forgesdlc.com for the engineering handbook (SDLC, PDLC, disciplines, agents).
  • Product and encyclopediaforgesdlc.com explains the approach in business terms and hosts deeper knowledge articles.

Practical first steps

  1. Align on intent — Decide what “done” means for your next slice of work (outcome, constraints, who approves).
  2. Put policy in-repo — Prefer small, reviewable docs and checklists beside the code they govern.
  3. Use agents for execution, humans for judgment — Automate repetition; keep sign-off and trade-offs with people.
  4. Roadmap before deep WBS — If you use the Forge Product Manager path, draft the roadmap first, apply Definition of Ready (outcome, evidence, horizon, OKR fit, dependencies, non-goals, next gate), then run Product Management Versona and follow Suggested next Versonas before breaking work into a heavy WBS. Hub: Forge Product Manager (orchestration vs challenge-only Versona); full handbook copy lives in blueprints.

Terminology and lifecycle maps

On the same site (generated methodology pages), use these when you need definitions or a phase-by-phase view from problem discovery through delivery:

Shorter hub: Terminology and lifecycle (tutorial index page).

How these pages are built: Documentation sites and Kitchen Sink — forge-autodoc, handbook_page, and the blueprints handbook generator.

Next

Add more tutorials alongside this file under tutorials/ in the forgesdlc repository; the site build turns them into HTML under /tutorials/ on the deployed site. See Documentation sites and Kitchen Sink for the pipeline.

Canonical source

Edit getting-started.md first; rebuild the handbook from the blueprints-website repository root with python3 generator/build-handbook.py --all, then python3 generator/inject-portal-nav.py.